


I Want To Feel It Hurt (Like Losing Someone Should)

by mihrsuri



Series: The Tudor Triad [1]
Category: The Tudors (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Relationships, Child Death, F/M, Infidelity, Multi, Period-Typical Sexism, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-22 21:56:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18142448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mihrsuri/pseuds/mihrsuri
Summary: Sometimes she thinks that it was Catherine who killed her son, because she would not yield and Bessie feels ashamed of herself for thinking such things. [Bessie Blount in the Rewrite The Stars universe]





	I Want To Feel It Hurt (Like Losing Someone Should)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a song by Johnnyswim. This is also a prequel fic to Rewrite The Stars

Bess had accepted that her stepdaughter would never like her (it hurt, she admitted but she understood why Mary would not seek to blame her father but would instead seek cast Bessie as the villain, though she had never asked for any of this) but she worried about what she would think of her little half brother. She worried a great deal about that, especially as the Great Matter moved forward. 

The King had gained his annulment but his request to marry Bessie and legitimise their son was refused for the time being. Henry was furious - he had blamed Spain, blamed Catherine for interfering and he had banished her to a far away manor. If she was honest, Bessie could not find it in herself to feel much for the woman who had had her denounced as a grasping harlot and her son as nothing more than a common bastard who had no right to sit on the throne of England but she does not wish Henry to send his daughter away like this. 

But he had. And the world casts the blame upon her for having urged Henry to do so, for having bewitched him to cast aside his Queen for her pride and ambition and for pushing forward her bastard son. 

It was true that Mary had insulted her ("You are my fathers mistress, nothing more") but she had expected that, had told Henry that asking the girl to accept that she was now illegitimate and that her mother had been set aside was to be hard enough, asking her to accept the stepmother she would see as the cause of her and her mothers banishment was too much but Henry had not listened, too caught up in the sense of injustice at the continued stonewalling by the Pope that he saw as caused by Spain and by Catherine. 

Their meeting had not gone well and it had ended with Mary being exiled from court. And then, then her little boy had died and Bessie is banished to a marriage and forgotten. She grieves for her son, not for the crown that might have been - in her bleakest moments she sometimes think that the world is right, that her innocent child was taken away in punishment for her ambitions and her pride but she cannot think that of the lord - to take away such a sweet boy merely to humble his mother. 

Little Henry would have been a wonderful king, had he been given the chance, Bessie often thinks. She thinks about the softness of him, the warmth of his tiny body curled around her, the weight of him in her arms. The way his hair curled, the words he had started to say, before he had been taken from her. She holds on to the fact that he called her mama. That he knew he was loved by his parents and nothing of the venom that was aimed at him. 

It is hard for her not to hate Mary and Catherine. Especially Catherine who had railed at her, who had placed so many obstacles in the way of her son. Catherine who was allowed to keep her child, while Bessie was not. Sometimes she thinks that it was Catherine who killed her son, because she would not yield and Bessie feels ashamed of herself for thinking such things. 

Her husband is a good man. For all that he was commanded to marry her he has never held it against her - neither that she did not come to her marriage a virgin or that they must reside away from court. She thinks she might have been able to love him in another life but she is deeply and sincerely fond of him. 

Bessies second child is a girl she and Gilbert name Elizabeth. She cries and she wonders what kind of big brother Henry might have been. When the King (he is always the King now, even in her mind - he has not been Henry since their son died, for all that she does still loves him) searches for an alliance marriage she thinks she can accept that, for all that it burns that he would not stay with her, would not see if they could have had another child (not to replace their little Henry, never to replace but to have another life to love) but she knows he needs a heir. 

When he marries Anne Boleyn? Bessie wishes she could hate her, this woman who is welcomed with love where Bessie was met with scorn, this woman who Henry so clearly loves so deeply but she cannot bring herself to. Instead she hates Catherine more, for taking away what could have been and Henry for not caring enough to wait. 

When the Princess Elizabeth is born Bessie wonders if her daughter with the King might have been named Elizabeth, might have had her blue eyes alongside Henry's red hair. Her Elizabeth, who they call Lizzie is given a place in the new princesses household and when she looks at her own daughter playing with the princess she thinks, what if their positions were reversed, because she cannot not think of such things, looking at these two girls who are almost sisters. 

(She avoids Mary and Mary avoids her. She knows Mary still hates her but she cannot help but love the little princess). 

She and Gilbert name their son after him. He looks nothing like the older brother he will never meet. Her Lizzie is devoted to her namesake princess and there is peace, at least in this, though her heart will never not hurt watching Queen Anne with her son, when it should have been Bessies son there and she cannot help but think of it every time she sees Prince Thomas, who basks in the love of both his parents, his siblings and the country. 

And Catherine of Aragon. Bessie Blount still hates Catherine, hates her with an intensity that does scare her but she will always look at the woman and see the fact it was due to her that so many celebrated the death of her son. She can never forgive her that.

**Author's Note:**

> I have So Many Feelings about Bessie Blount, it turns out. SO MANY.


End file.
